Rosman, Katherine, “Religion’s Generation Gap: When children become more devout than their parents, relationships can be strained,” The Wall Street Journal 2Mar07:W1,12.

 

OVERVIEW

 

For decades Sex, Drugs and Rock’n’Roll were symptoms of adolescent rebellion. So this author suggests and adds: “Some families are adding religion to that list.” Children of non-religious or nominally religious Boomers and early GenX parents are increasingly “getting swept up in religious fervor. This is creating a complicated and sometimes painful family dynamic.”

 

Kevin Ellstrand (16) says that two years ago he “started following Christ with all my heart.” His attendance at a weekly Bible-study group, and even his going on a mission trip to Mexico was not been especially upsetting to his parents, who describe themselves as secular humanists. For them, his religious behavior is preferable to drugs and sex at his age. But Kevin’s insistent rejection of evolution does upset them.

 

To me that is appalling (says his mother Karen Byers who has a doctorate in strategic management). We get into arguments, and voices get a little louder than they should.

How important are these issue to Kevin? “I don’t want my parents to go to hell for not believing in God. But that is what’s going to happen and it really scares me.”

 

Kevin’s father, Alan Ellstrand, director of MBA programs at the University of Arkansas business school respects his son but is saddened that such worries are a byproduct of his son’s faith.

 

Many irreligious or nominally religious parents see religious fervor in their children as a benign stage or even a positive influence. Others are understandably saddened to see their children choose a worldview and lifestyle so different from their own. A few have panicked or become enraged.

 

Some teens, this writer continues, “are forgoing secular careers in favor of the ministry, moving away from home to religious enclaves, skipping family celebrations and changing their family names.”

 

This can put on youth pastors and ministers the sensitive responsibility of encouraging faith and personal identity while honoring their parents and family. Pastor of student ministries at conservative Calvary Chapel in Tucson, Arizona notes: “My joke is, they liked them better when they were on drugs.”

 

Young Life, an Evangelical parachurch outreach to religiously “disinterested youth,” reports an increase in student attendance at its clubs from 66,362 to 106,000 from 1993-94 to 2004-05.

 

In Mecca and Main Street, Geneive Abdo, a senior analyst for the Gallup Organization’s Center for Muslim Studies describes “a significant number of young U.S. Muslims becoming substantially more devoted to Islam than their parents.” The Jewish community also reports “a growing number of formerly secular young people embracing Orthodox lifestyle.

 

Magdalena Ramos, 48, and her late husband (Rosman writes) came to Los Angeles from Honduras 24 years ago to provide economic opportunity for their children. “Every parent wants their child to have more money, says Mrs. Ramos, a housekeeper who didn’t raise her son, Abner, with religion. During his sophomore year a U. of Cal. LA, Abner declared he had decided to devote his life to Christ. But she was disappointed to forgo his plans of becoming a psychologist in favor of low-paying ministry work. Though Mrs. Ramos says she is proud that her son is “a good Christian,” she had thought he would be the first person in the family with a professional career. He had also told her when he was a boy that he’d one day help support her. Now 29, Abner says, “My mom’s dreams for me are inconsistent with the callings God has for me.”

 

Tom Lin’s parents were immigrants from Taiwan who sacrificed to send him to Harvard expecting him some day to become a corporate attorney. When Tom instead considered ministering through InterVarsity, a national college ministry, his mother threatened to kill herself. Now 34, and an IV regional director, Tom sadly describes the seven years in which his parents cut off all communication. Not until his mother was diagnosed with cancer, were relationships renewed (his mother died from the disease in 2002).

 

Tom knows his choices were “shaming” to the values held by many Asian immigrants. “When (immigrants’) children forsake the very reason they came to this country, it’s particularly devastating.”

 

The embrace of Islam by young people can be confounding to secular Muslim-Americans who immigrated to the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s. “Our parents were more culturally Muslim than religious,” Says Farhan Latif, former president of the Muslim Students’ Assoc. at the U. of Michigan (Dearborn). But in the wake of Sept. 11 attacks—and the racial profiling of Muslims ensued—some young people have gravitated toward their religion as a show of ancestral pride and an act of defiance against a society they see as discriminatory. Young Muslims, for instance, says it has seen participation double since 2000 to more than 1,000 people.

 

Roseman describes how Eshen Ali, 21, grew up in a London Pakistani neighborhood and shied away from religion because of the hypocrisy he observed—devout Muslims drinking alcohol, etc.. But as he began to learn about “true” Islam through the Muslim Students Association (after moving to LA), he now considers himself a devout Muslim praying four or five times a day.

 

The term for secular Jews who return to Orthodoxy is Baal Teshuva (“master of return” or BT in contrast to FFB “from birth”). This article tells further stories of a 70^th birthday cruise broken up because one of the children’s families was Orthodox and the cruise ship had no kosher kitchen and the cruise demanded travel on the Sabbath. Giti Liberman has adapted to her 15-year-old daughter Kara’s embrace of Orthodox lifestyle providing her with “separate plates, pots and pans… refrigerator, dishwasher and oven.” Still Kara prefers to spend the Sabbath weekends with “observant relatives. ‘That, says her mother, ‘is a bummer.’” On the other hand, one mother returned to strict observance and her husband, a lapsed Catholic converted, to join the religious lifestyles of their twin boys.

 

Katherine Rosman aptly points out how the National Study of Youth and Religion (see Christian Smith’s Soul Searching, 2005), the most comprehensive study of youth and religion to date, suggests the trend highlighted here is not the national norm. Most teenagers are following the religious ideas of their parents. Against that norm, however, some adolescents are breaking with their parents’ faith and going their own way. Another significant group are turning with zeal to Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or other spirituality their parents have discarded or never adopted.

 

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

 

1.   What was your interest in this article? Has it given you any ideas or raised further issues and concerns? What would you criticize here or comment on? What specific questions would you like to see discussed?

2.   How should young converts or zealots be counseled in regard to their own spiritual development and their relationships with families and friends?

3.   Are there some cases in which high school students experiencing a conversion to another faith, or a personal faith renewal in their own, should make every attempt to keep family solidarity and postpone some aspects of religious activity until their college years?

4.   What advice would you give distraught parents who are dismayed because of a son or daughter’s conversion or seemingly excessive religious fervor?

5.   What teaching and counsel do the various Scriptures (Jewish Bible, Christian Bible, Koran, and other religious traditions) provide as to children’s faith when that of their parents is slack?

IMPLICATIONS

 

1.   Need for a spiritual (and cultural) identity, reaction against violence and moral decadence, response to media’s materialistic and hedonistic excesses, the emptiness of secular humanism’s explanation of life and meaning, the hypocrisy of adults and pressure from peers, have all been suggested by young people as reasons for their new-found commitment to religious faith and practice.

2.   Young faith and fervor need balance and perspective that can be found in a positive peer support groups, from a faith community and adult mentors. They can be helped to avoid extremism, over-simplification and dogmatism in a healthy community.

3.   Youth with strong, spiritual fervor need to be encouraged in their growth and spiritual journey while being cautioned against the excesses mentioned above.